American Narcisicism

Last night I went to see him do a reading at a local bookstore. He talked about how in the 1950’s 12% of American teens answered yes to the question “Are you an important person?” In 2006, that number jumped to over 80%.

The theme of his book is about our fascination with, and addiction to, fame. But I found the most interesting parts of his talk to be about what modern media has done to the way we think.

He pointed to reality television as a major influence driving our narcissistic culture (this echoes the sentiment in Thomas De Zengotita’s book Mediated) and went on to talk about how reality TV has taught people that they are fascinating to others. So fascinating in fact, that you don’t even have to be interesting to become famous. The expectation is just be yourself, and people will be riveted by watching you brush your teeth in the morning.

Donald Trump’s claim that he saw “thousands and thousands” of American Muslims cheering the fall of the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001 has received considerable backlash from the American Muslim population.

In Mr. Trump’s comments, he alleges that the Muslim community and Arab population in New Jersey knew the towers were going to come down, and celebrated when they finally did.

“There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. “There was absolutely no celebration, in fact we were very much concerned about the backlash at our community.”

Ahmed Shedeed, president of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, has also decried Trump’s comments as patently untrue.

“I’m worried about as much as he believed in what he says, other people going to believe what he is saying,” he told CNN. “This is going to be more hate, and more Islamophobia against this Muslim community.”

The mayor of Jersey City, StevenFulop, has criticized Trump for making unfounded claims.

“Trump needs to understand that Jersey City will not be part of his hate campaign,” said Fulop. “Clearly, Trump has memory issues or willfully distorts the truth, either of which should be concerning for the Republican Party.'”

When Trump was asked to clarify his statements in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC program This Week, the real estate magnate stood by his word.

“It was on television. I saw it,” Trump said. “It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don’t like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time.”

Trump has also circulated a September 2001 CBS report that mentioned eight people celebrating the fall of the towers.

The reporter quoted in the CBS story, Pablo Guzmn, said on Twitter that “Eight cheering is [eight] too many. But not ‘thousands.’ And disgusted Muslims also called police about people on roofs.” He has also said that the video was edited, and that his comments were taken out of context.

Independent research conducted by PolitiFact has determined that while there were celebrations about the attacks on the Twin Towers in the Palestinian territories,nothing of the sortoccurred in America.